The Quest of the Silver Fleece Part 15

"Of course, we cannot think of keeping her."

Miss Smith pursed her lips, offering her first expression of opinion.

"I guess we'll worry along with her a little while anyhow," she said.

The girl stared at Miss Smith in honest, if unpardonable, amazement.

"Do you mean to say that you are going to keep in this school a girl who not only lies and steals but is positively--_immoral_?"

Miss Smith smiled, wholly unmoved.

"No; but I mean that _I_ am here to learn from those whose ideas of right do not agree with mine, to discover _why_ they differ, and to let them learn of me--so far as I am worthy."

Mary Taylor was not unappreciative of Miss Smith's stern high-mindedness, but her heart hardened at this, to her, misdirected zeal. Echo of the spirit of an older day, Miss Smith seemed, to her, to be cramped and paralyzed in an armor of prejudice and sectionalisms.

Plain-speaking was the only course, and Mary, if a little complacent perhaps in her frankness, was sincere in her purpose.

"I think, Miss Smith, you are making a very grave mistake. I regard Zora as a very undesirable person from every point of view. I look upon Mr. Cresswell's visit today as almost providential. He came offering an olive branch from the white aristocracy to this work; to bespeak his appreciation and safeguard the future. Moreover," and Miss Taylor's voice gathered firmness despite Miss Smith's inscrutable eye, "moreover, I have reason to know that the disposition--indeed, the plan--in certain quarters to help this work materially depends very largely on your willingness to meet the advances of the Southern whites half way."

She paused for a reply or a question. Receiving neither, she walked with dignity up the stairs. From her window she could see Cresswell's straight shoulders, as he rode toward town, and beyond him a black speck in the road. But she could not see the smile on Mr. Cresswell's lips, nor did she hear him remark twice, with seeming irrelevance, "The devil!"

The rider, being closer to it, recognized in Mary Taylor's "black speck"

Bles Alwyn walking toward him rapidly with axe and hoe on shoulder, whistling merrily. They saw each other almost at the same moment and whistle and smile faded. Mr. Cresswell knew the Negro by sight and disliked him. He belonged in his mind to that younger cla.s.s of half-educated blacks who were impudent and disrespectful toward their superiors, not even touching his hat when he met a white man. Moreover, he was sure that it was Miss Taylor with whom this boy had been talking so long and familiarly in the cotton-field last Spring--an offence doubly heinous now that he had seen Miss Taylor.

His first impulse was to halt the Negro then and there and tell him a few plain truths. But he did not feel quarrelsome at the moment, and there was, after all, nothing very tangible to justify a berating. The fellow's impudence was sure to increase, and then! So he merely reined his horse to the better part of the foot-path and rode on.

Bles, too, was thinking. He knew the well-dressed man with his milk-white face and overbearing way. He would expect to be greeted with raised hat but Bles bit his lips and pulled down his cap firmly. The axe, too, in some indistinct way felt good in his hand. He saw the horse coming in his pathway and stepping aside in the dust continued on his way, neither looking nor speaking.

So they pa.s.sed each other by, Mr. Cresswell to town, Bles to the swamp, apparently ignorant of each other's very existence. Yet, as the s.p.a.ce widened between them, each felt a more vindictive anger for the other.

How dares the black puppy to ignore a Cresswell on the highway? If this went on, the day would surely come when Negroes felt no respect or fear whatever for whites? And then--my G.o.d! Mr. Cresswell struck his mare a vicious blow and dashed toward town.

The black boy, too, went his way in silent, burning rage. Why should he be elbowed into the roadside dust by an insolent bully? Why had he not stood his ground? Pshaw! All this fine frenzy was useless, and he knew it. The sweat oozed on his forehead. It wasn't man against man, or he would have dragged the pale puppy from his horse and rubbed his face in the earth. It wasn't even one against many, else how willingly, swinging his axe, would have stood his ground before a mob.

No, it was one against a world, a world of power, opinion, wealth, opportunity; and he, the one, must cringe and bear in silence lest the world crash about the ears of his people. He slowly plodded on in bitter silence toward the swamp. But the day was balmy, the way was beautiful; contempt slowly succeeded anger, and hope soon triumphed over all. For yonder was Zora, poised, waiting. And behind her lay the Field of Dreams.

_Nine_

THE PLANTING

Zora looked down upon Bles, where he stood to his knees in mud. The toil was beyond exhilaration--it was sickening weariness and panting despair.

The great roots, twined in one unbroken snarl, clung frantically to the black soil. The vines and bushes fought back with thorn and bramble.

Zora stood wiping the blood from her hands and staring at Bles. She saw the long gnarled fingers of the tough little trees and they looked like the fingers of Elspeth down there beneath the earth pulling against the boy. Slowly Zora forgot her blood and pain. Who would win--the witch, or Jason?

Bles looked up and saw the bleeding hands. With a bound he was beside her.

"Zora!" The cry seemed wrung from his heart by contrition. Why had he not known--not seen before! "Zora, come right out of this! Sit down here and rest."

She looked at him unwaveringly; there was no flinching of her spirit.

"I sha'n't do it," she said. "You'se working, and I'se going to work."

"But--Zora--you're not used to such work, and I am. You're tired out."

"So is you," was her reply.

He looked himself over ruefully, and dropping his axe, sat down beside her on a great log. Silently they contemplated the land; it seemed indeed a hopeless task. Then they looked at each other in sudden, unspoken fear of failure.

"If we only had a mule!" he sighed. Immediately her face lighted and her lips parted, but she said nothing. He presently bounded to his feet.

"Never mind, Zora. To-morrow is Sat.u.r.day, and I'll work all day. We just _will_ get it done--sometime." His mouth closed with determination.

"We won't work any more today, then?" cried Zora, her eagerness betraying itself despite her efforts to hide it.

"_You_ won't," affirmed Bles. "But I've got to do just a little--"

But Zora was adamant: he was tired; she was tired; they would rest.

To-morrow with the rising sun they would begin again.

"There'll be a bright moon tonight," ventured Bles.

"Then I'll come too," Zora announced positively, and he had to promise for her sake to rest.

They went up the path together and parted diffidently, he watching her flit away with sorrowful eyes, a little disturbed and puzzled at the burden he had voluntarily a.s.sumed, but never dreaming of drawing back.

Zora did not go far. No sooner did she know herself well out of his sight than she dropped lightly down beside the path, listening intently until the last echo of his footsteps had died away. Then, leaving the cabin on her right, and the scene of their toil on her left, she cut straight through the swamp, skirted the big road, and in a half-hour was in the lower meadows of the Cresswell plantations, where the tired stock was being turned out to graze for the night. Here, in the shadow of the wood, she lingered. Slowly, but with infinite patience, she broke one strand after another of the barbed-wire fencing, watching, the while, the sun grow great and crimson, and die at last in mighty splendor behind the dimmer westward forests.

The voices of the hands and hostlers grew fainter and thinner in the distance of purple twilight until the last of them disappeared. Silence fell, deep and soft; the silence of a day sinking to sleep. Not until then did Zora steal forth from her hiding-place.

She had chosen her mule long before--a big, black beast, snorting over his pile of corn,--and gliding up to him, she gathered his supper into her skirt, found a stout halter, and fed him sparingly as he followed her. Quickly she unfastened the pieces of the fence, led the animal through, and spliced them again; and then, with fox-like caution, she guided her prize through the labyrinthine windings of the swamp. It was dark and haunting, and ever and again rose lonely night cries. The girl trembled a little, but plodded resolutely on until the dim silver disk of the half-moon began to glimmer through the trees. Then she pressed on more swiftly, and fed more scantily, until finally, with the moonlight pouring over them at the black lagoon, Zora attempted to drive the animal into the still waters; but he gave a loud protesting snort and balked. By subtle temptings she gave him to understand that plenty lay beyond the dark waters, and quickly swinging herself to his back she started to ride him up and down along the edge of the lagoon, petting and whispering to him of good things beyond. Slowly her eyes grew wide; she seemed to be riding out of dreamland on some hobgoblin beast.

Deeper and deeper they penetrated into the dark waters. Now they entered the slime; now they stumbled on hidden roots; but deeper and deeper they waded until at last, turning the animal's head with a jerk, and giving him a sharp stroke of the whip, she headed straight for the island. A moment the beast snorted and plunged; higher and higher the black still waters rose round the girl. They crept up her little limbs, swirled round her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and gleamed green and slimy along her shoulders. A wild terror gripped her. Maybe she was riding the devil's horse, and these were the yawning gates of h.e.l.l, black and sombre beneath the cold, dead radiance of the moon. She saw again the gnarled and black and claw-like fingers of Elspeth gripping and dragging her down.

A scream struggled in her breast, her fingers relaxed, and the big beast, stretching his cramped neck, rose in one mighty plunge and planted his feet on the sand of the island.

Bles, hurrying down in the morning with new tools and new determination, stopped and stared in blank amazement. Zora was perched in a tree singing softly and beneath a fat black mule was finis.h.i.+ng his breakfast.

"Zora--" he gasped, "how--how did you do it?"

She only smiled and sang a happier measure, pausing only to whisper:

"Dreams--dreams--it's all dreams here, I tells you."